Claim: The Moon's Shadow During The Solar Eclipse Disproves Sphere Earth

We are discussing about the eclipse, but are flat Earth even seeing this? Even if they are seeing this I certainly believe their beliefs and "truth story" will still stay but let us just hope that I am wrong about this. Whatever the thing is, I have gained a lot of knowledge about our place in the universe and have learned about different people and their hard attitude and denial.
 
We are discussing about the eclipse, but are flat Earth even seeing this? Even if they are seeing this I certainly believe their beliefs and "truth story" will still stay.
They tend to see what they want to see. I guess that's true for most of us, to varying degrees. But moreso for some. ;)
 
About science I will always believe what evidence will say, even if it will go against my beliefs that I have held for years, because SCIENCE IS THE TRUTH!!! Although I do come up with with my on philosophies regarding metaphysics, like is their any purpose of why we are here? What is beyond our understanding that transcends time and space? What is love, and how it descends in our thoughts, a classical example would be from Interstellar when Dr. Brand describes love and its meaning to Cooper.
 
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Soundly, who did the Pontchartrain power line videos showing the curve of the Earth, did a nice timelapse of the eclipse, in which he included some overexposed and boosted shots that show a little detail on the moon.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWMy6V_ZQQ4

1:34
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That's awesome. I tried to get earthshine but my long exposure shots had too much internally reflected light in the telescope from the bright corona. Drat.

You can kind of see how some of the features very faintly show up, but the scope has a characteristic blue internal reflection I've seen before with bright stars, and the corona produced it as well.

Anyway, just to add my two cents, I did the math on the approximate path of the moon's shadow across the earth's surface, by first calculating the coordinates the shadow is projected out into space as being 180 degrees from the sun's position relative to the center of the moon. I then calculated the position of the earth's center relative to the center of the moon, and finally, the angular separation and position angle of the shadow's coordinates relative to the earth's coordinates as seen from the center of the moon. Using that information I calculated the shadow's latitude and longitude on earth by calculating the latitude and longitude of the sub lunar point and the following formulae:

Latitude = arcsin(Sin(Moon Latitude)*cos(p)+cos(Moon Latitude)*sin(p)*cos(-theta))
where Moon Latitude = Latitude of the sub lunar point
p = arcsin(d/angular size of earth from moon)-d
where d = the angular displacement of moon's shadow from center of earth as seen from the center of the moon
theta = position angle of the displacement of the moon's shadow, with 0 degrees at north.
Longitude = arcsin((sin(p)*sin(-theta))/cos(latitude))-moon longitude
where moon longitude = Longitude of the sub lunar point
latitude = latitude of the moon's shadow calculated in the first equation.

The equations I used assumed a spherical earth, which isn't exactly true, but the result is close enough to demonstrate the general west-to-east path of the moon's shadow across the earth during the eclipse. Actually given my approximation I was pleasantly surprised by how close the resulting path was to the true path:
 
Hi everyone
I saw the scale model video from the first page on youtub and it led me here

I just wanted to share a couple of short videos I made around the last eclipse to show 2 things. The cool thing (i think) is that you can, in about 5 minutes, download the program I used, + the model, and play with it youself, speed it up or down, even change distances, make the earth spin faster, or the moon slower, or further away, etc. The instructions to download the models are in the vid descriptions

1) why the shadow goes from west to east:

Source: https://youtu.be/WK-ykoAsLHo


2) why the shadow of the moon is smaller than the moon (the umbra)
video model:
Source: https://youtu.be/SogwFoT7f68

real life video:
Source: https://youtu.be/F0lSqucfFlk
 
A new YT video. The same old mistake. The assumption is that the Moon's shadow is circling the Earth.



The author of this video borrowed a diagram explaining geostationary satellites. To keep pace with the surface of the Earth, the geostationary satellite has to orbit the Earth faster than the surface of the Earth is rotating. The simplest way to picture this is to think of a wheel or merry-go-round. The rim rotates faster than the hub. He has extended this idea, and calculates how fast the Moon would have to move in order for the Moon's shadow to keep pace with the surface of the Earth.

So in order for the Moon to keep pace with the rotation of the Earth it would have to move fifty seven times faster. It would have to be going 59,280. And remember, that's even just to keep pace with the Earth. In order for the Moon to overtake the rotation of the Earth, it would have to be moving even faster than that. But according to the experts, the Earth only travels at 2,288 mph.

Do you understand what this means? In order for the solar eclipse shadow to move across the Earth from west to east, they need the Moon to overtake the rotation of the Earth.
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He's visualizing the line, in his diagram, from the Moon to the Earth's surface, as a fixed structure. Like a spoke on a wheel. Okay, that's fine if you want to visualize how geostationary satellites work. What he has done is calculate (accurately?) how fast the Moon would have to move to stay stationary in our sky.

What he's not visualizing about the Moon's shadow: The Sun would also have to be orbiting the Earth; and just fast enough to keep pace with the Moon in our sky. In his diagram, the Sun would have to stay on that same line, or spoke. But the Sun is a fixed light source. The Moon is passing in front of the Sun, and the Moon's shadow is moving across the Earth's surface; not around it.
 
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Apologies if this has been addressed already, but how do FE believers explain that NASA, for one, can *predict* eclipses rather accurately? Do eclipses have to be another NASA hoax?
 
The explanation I've seen most often is that they're simply using knowledge of the Saros Cycle, which has been used since ancient times to predict eclipses. From The Flat Earth Society's 'wiki':
Q. But what about NASA's yearly lunar eclipse predictions? They must be based on a geometric model, and not simply cycles in the sky, surely?

A. NASA freely admits that they use ancient cycle charts for their eclipse predictions. The Saros Cycle and those cobby old ancient methods which simply look at past patterns in the sky to predict the next one is precisely how "modern theorists" predict the lunar eclipse today.

https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Lunar_Eclipse
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The explanation I've seen most often is that they're simply using knowledge of the Saros Cycle, which has been used since ancient times to predict eclipses. From The Flat Earth Society's 'wiki':
Q. But what about NASA's yearly lunar eclipse predictions? They must be based on a geometric model, and not simply cycles in the sky, surely?

A. NASA freely admits that they use ancient cycle charts for their eclipse predictions. The Saros Cycle and those cobby old ancient methods which simply look at past patterns in the sky to predict the next one is precisely how "modern theorists" predict the lunar eclipse today.

https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Lunar_Eclipse
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Ah, thank you.
So they should be able to make the predictions themselves . . .
 
The explanation I've seen most often is that they're simply using knowledge of the Saros Cycle, which has been used since ancient times to predict eclipses. From The Flat Earth Society's 'wiki':
Q. But what about NASA's yearly lunar eclipse predictions? They must be based on a geometric model, and not simply cycles in the sky, surely?

A. NASA freely admits that they use ancient cycle charts for their eclipse predictions. The Saros Cycle and those cobby old ancient methods which simply look at past patterns in the sky to predict the next one is precisely how "modern theorists" predict the lunar eclipse today.

https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Lunar_Eclipse
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Do those cycles predict the *locations* of the eclipse paths or just the times?
 
How do they think Predictions of lunar eclipses work? Since in the flat earth model they can’t be caused by the Earth’s shadow. I guess that’s a subject for a different thread.
 
A. NASA freely admits that they use ancient cycle charts for their eclipse predictions. The Saros Cycle and those cobby old ancient methods which simply look at past patterns in the sky to predict the next one is precisely how "modern theorists" predict the lunar eclipse today.
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This is an ad hoc fantasy presented as fact.


Below is just a bit of the history, as presented in the article below. Skipping the ancient Greeks, the medieval Islamic astronomers, etc.

https://www.popsci.com/people-have-been-able-to-predict-eclipses-for-really-long-time-heres-how/


The people who started using more modern calculations to predict the eclipse paths were Friedrich Bessel and William Chauvenet. Bessel came up with the basic math that we use around 1820, and Chauvenet put it in its modern form in 1855...

From the late 1940's until 1963, an astronomer named Charles Burleigh Watts spent countless hours mapping out the variations that appeared on the moon's surface, focusing on the landforms that appeared on the outer edge of the moon as seen from Earth. His detailed maps helped eclipse predictions get even more precise. Suddenly, the shadow of the eclipse wasn't an oval, it was a many sided polygon with each angle aligning with a valley on the Moon's limb.

Then, NASA took it up a notch. The space agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter built on Watt’s work, and captured the topography of the moon in detail that would have been impossible to get from photographs of the moon taken on the ground.

Wright took that data about the shape of the moon, the topography of the Earth, and the positions of the sun, Moon and Earth to create an incredibly detailed and accurate accounting of where the eclipse shadow will pass across the United States.
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How do they think Predictions of lunar eclipses work? Since in the flat earth model they can’t be caused by the Earth’s shadow. I guess that’s a subject for a different thread.

The statement that I see most often from Flat Earthers is that they are not yet certain *how* lunar eclipses happen, but that doesn't matter, because no one else really knows either. If you argue that astronomers do in fact know the cause of both lunar and solar eclipses, and that our ability to precisely predict these events is evidence of the correctness of the heliocentric Solar System and spherical Earth, then you get the Saros cycle argument: the ancients were able to predict eclipses accurately long before Copernicus and Kepler sorted out heliocentrism.

Flat Earthers also claim NASA uses the Saros cycle for making their eclipse predictions. This is based, so far as I can tell, solely on the fact that Saros is mentioned on a nasa.gov page: https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsaros/SEsaros.html While the Saros cycle is a real thing it's not how NASA or anyone else these days makes predictions.

The Saros Cycle is periodicity in the timings of eclipses. One can use it to determine approximately when the next eclipse will occur, but it won't tell you the path of a solar eclipse, nor will it give you timings for totality precise to less than a second as modern methods will.

A Flat Earther could prove their statement that the Saros is adequate for predicting eclipses by producing a computer program to predict eclipses using just the Saros Cycle or some other periodicity. No one ever has. Meanwhile, there's open source software that does predict eclipses accurately, and all of it that I've seen uses a standard heliocentric model of the Solar System and the accepted sizes of the the Earth, Sun, and Moon.
 
The statement that I see most often from Flat Earthers is that they are not yet certain *how* lunar eclipses happen, but that doesn't matter, because no one else really knows either. If you argue that astronomers do in fact know the cause of both lunar and solar eclipses, and that our ability to precisely predict these events is evidence of the correctness of the heliocentric Solar System and spherical Earth, then you get the Saros cycle argument: the ancients were able to predict eclipses accurately long before Copernicus and Kepler sorted out heliocentrism.

Flat Earthers also claim NASA uses the Saros cycle for making their eclipse predictions. This is based, so far as I can tell, solely on the fact that Saros is mentioned on a nasa.gov page: https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsaros/SEsaros.html While the Saros cycle is a real thing it's not how NASA or anyone else these days makes predictions.

The Saros Cycle is periodicity in the timings of eclipses. One can use it to determine approximately when the next eclipse will occur, but it won't tell you the path of a solar eclipse, nor will it give you timings for totality precise to less than a second as modern methods will.

A Flat Earther could prove their statement that the Saros is adequate for predicting eclipses by producing a computer program to predict eclipses using just the Saros Cycle or some other periodicity. No one ever has. Meanwhile, there's open source software that does predict eclipses accurately, and all of it that I've seen uses a standard heliocentric model of the Solar System and the accepted sizes of the the Earth, Sun, and Moon.
Regardless of the shape of the Earth one can make accurate measurements of the sun and Moon with time and then construct a 3-d mathematical model of the two and show that these eclipses happen for very specific arrangements of the bodies in the model and then actually happen at the predicted times.

If the earth is flat they’d still have to account for the observations fitting a model in which the earth isn’t flat.

None of them put any mathematical rigor into their model or are willing to invest the time to make careful, precise measurements of the heavenly bodies to discover this coincidence.

They mostly just replace science and math with magic, which is what it would take for their model to actually work (I.e., make accurate predictions of observables).
 
The flat earth model is completely unable to explain or predict total solar eclipse paths. I created a spreadsheet to calculate the position of the sun and moon based on Chapront-Touzé's ELP2000-85 model of the moon's orbit and equations and orbital elements from Jean Meeus' "Astronomical Formulae for Calculators." Using this I was able to predict the approximate path of the 2017 eclipse and the results agreed with my own personal observations from Wyoming as well.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2KMHBJaVh8


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oSOVu02UfE

If I can predict eclipse paths using a spreadsheet based on equations published in dusty old books that have been sitting around in libraries for decades, then why is flat earth completely unable to explain these paths? Flat earth proponents focus on general periodicity of eclipses but they deliberately overlook the details, like predicting the actual path of total solar eclipses.
 
Yes because their model can’t even predict the observed motion of the Sun in the sky at any time, let alone the eclipses.
 
Yes because their model can’t even predict the observed motion of the Sun in the sky at any time, let alone the eclipses.
Well they could at least try citing Walter Bislin's flat earth refraction model, truly a work of art that. It can predict the observed motion of the Sun with good accuracy, but only by force fitting the bending of light in ways that are unique to each location and do not follow any consistent rules except to force the correct location of the sun, moon and stars. Even doing that you still can't predict the path the total eclipse shadow will take.
http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=flat+earth+dome+model
 
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